The United States Constitution guarantees citizens the right to trial by an impartial jury in all criminal prosecutions and in certain civil suits. See U.S. Constitution, Amendments VI and VII. The process used by trial courts to select jurors is called xe2x80x9cvoir dire.xe2x80x9d The term xe2x80x9cvoir direxe2x80x9d is French and literally means xe2x80x9cto speak the truth.xe2x80x9d The voir dire process is used to determine whether particular persons are xe2x80x9cqualifiedxe2x80x9d to sit as jurors, whether such persons"" schedules enable them to sit as jurors and then whether or not they are xe2x80x9csuitablexe2x80x9d to sit as a juror on a particular case.
The first hurdle which must be cleared in the juror voir dire process is to determine whether a person is xe2x80x9cqualifiedxe2x80x9d to sit as a juror. In order to be xe2x80x9cqualifiedxe2x80x9d to sit as a juror, a person must meet certain minimal criteria, such as being 18 years of age or older and a U.S. citizen.
The next step in the juror voir dire process is to determine whether or not a person""s schedule renders him/her available to sit as a juror at a particular time when a trial is scheduled. And, finally, the jury voir dire process seeks to determine whether or not a particular person is xe2x80x9csuitablexe2x80x9d to sit as a juror with respect to the subject matter at issue in a particular trial. This inquiry seeks to determine whether the prospective juror is unbiased and is able to be impartial (for example, a person who was previously convicted on a burglary charge would most likely not be able to be impartial if serving as a juror in another burglary trial).
There are approximately 5,000 trial courts in the United States including courts under the jurisdiction of the states and courts in the federal judicial system. Each such trial court maintains its own rules and procedures with respect to the qualification and selection of prospective trial jurors and the conduct of the jury voir dire process.
A typical juror qualification and selection process is found in Title 28 of the United States Code which deals with federal judicial procedure. Pursuant to that statute, the first step in the federal court juror voir dire process is for the court to compile a master listing of names of prospective jurors from the citizens residing within the court""s jurisdiction. There are several general sources used by many courts to compile this master listing, including a list of registered voters and listings of persons filing tax returns, among other sources. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. xc2xa7xc2xa71861, 1863.
From the master listing of all prospective jurors, the court must devise a procedure whereby a random smaller selection of potential jurors may be made from the master listing. The random smaller selection procedure should be designed to ensure that such random smaller selection procedure results in a fair demographic cross section of the citizens residing within the jurisdiction of the court. See id. The random smaller selection procedure is typically used to form a xe2x80x9cmaster jury wheelxe2x80x9d which is periodically emptied and re-filled with another random smaller selection of prospective jurors from the master listing. Id.
The next step in a typical juror voir dire process involves the court""s random selection of names of prospective jurors from the master jury wheel at times when persons are needed for jury service in upcoming trials. Each court uses its own rules for determining the number of names to be drawn from the master jury wheel. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. xc2xa71864.
Once names of prospective jurors are drawn from the master jury wheel, the court must mail to every person whose name is drawn from the master jury wheel a juror questionnaire form for each prospective juror to fill out and return. See id. This juror questionnaire form seeks to determine whether such prospective juror is xe2x80x9cqualifiedxe2x80x9d to sit as a juror.
Following receipt of the completed juror questionnaire form, the court must determine whether a person completing such juror questionnaire form is qualified or unqualified for jury service. The persons who remain following such determination are then placed in a xe2x80x9cqualified jury wheel.xe2x80x9d From time to time, the court conducts a random drawing of such number of names of persons from the qualified jury wheel as may be required for assignment to jury panels for upcoming trials. Following the random drawing, the court then issues summonses to each person whose name was drawn from the qualified jury wheel for jury service. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C xc2xa7xc2xa71865, 1866. Typical means used for service of such summonses include service by registered, certified or first-class mail. See id.
Following receipt of a summons by a person whose name was drawn from the qualified jury wheel for jury duty, such person may still be excused or excluded from service as a juror or have his/her jury service deferred. A selected person may be excused from jury service or obtain a deferral of his/her jury service at a particular time, for example, upon a showing that jury service would cause him/her undue hardship or extreme inconvenience. (Many courts will, however, reinsert the excused person into the qualified jury wheel.) Finally, if a prospective juror makes it to this step in the jury voir dire process, he/she may still be excluded from jury service upon a showing that such prospective juror would not be able to render impartial jury service in a particular trial. Such excluded prospective juror could also be reinserted into the qualified jury wheel if the basis for the initial exclusion would not be relevant to his/her ability to serve on another jury. See id.
As can be determined from the above description, the typical juror voir dire processes currently used by various trial courts are quite cumbersome, inefficient, document intensive and costly. For example, typically each trial court pays costs associated with the printing and duplication of juror questionnaires, summonses, maps, instructions for jury service, fact books on jury service, and preprinted envelopes, among other documents. The courts also have postage costs associated with mailing the juror questionnaire forms to prospective jurors, postage for prepaid return envelopes for the prospective jurors"" use to return the completed juror questionnaire forms, postage for mailing notifications to prospective jurors who were determined to be unqualified for jury service, postage for mailing jury summonses to prospective jurors who were determined to be qualified and were then drawn from the qualified juror wheel, postage for prepaid return envelopes for each qualified prospective juror""s use to return a second juror questionnaire, postage for mailing letters to prospective jurors informing them of the dates upon which they must report to court, postage for prepaid return envelopes for prospective jurors"" use to request an exemption from, exclusion from or deferral of their jury service, and postage for mailing a notice to a prospective juror of the court""s determination with respect to the juror""s request for a deferral, exemption or exclusion. All of these postage costs mount quite rapidly. It is estimated that a single court can spend as much as $2.30 per person on postage costs alone with regard to the juror voir dire process. And, assuming that this court mails out approximately 75,000 initial juror questionnaires in a two-year period, it may spend as much as $172,500.00 in postage costs associated with the juror voir dire process in any two-year period.
In addition to these printing and postage costs, a trial court will also incur costs associated with personnel who administer the juror voir dire process and for each judge""s time for participation in the jury voir dire process. If the jury voir dire processes were managed more efficiently, courts could save much of these costs and/or reassign or reallocate administrative resources to other matters.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method and system for conducting jury voir dire which is efficient, utilizes less paper and is less costly than current processes.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for conducting jury voir dire which is efficient, reduces paperwork and is less costly than current jury voir dire processes used by trial courts.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
To achieve the objects and in accordance with the purposes of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, this invention includes, in one aspect, an automated process for conducting jury voir dire for a trial court comprising the steps of: forming a master database of names of citizens eligible to serve as jurors from a set of all citizens residing within the trial court""s jurisdiction, the master database being stored in a computer system of the trial court; forming a master jury wheel from the master database by using a random selection procedure to select a smaller set of names of citizens, the smaller set of names of citizens representative of a fair demographic cross section of the set of all citizens residing within the trial court""s jurisdiction, the master jury wheel being stored in the computer system of the trial court; randomly selecting a plurality of prospective jurors from the plurality of names of citizens from the master jury wheel and storing data in a database for a jury voir dire system relating to a name, a social security number, a first juror identification number and a court identification number for each one of the plurality of prospective jurors; transmitting an initial notification of a potential jury service to each one of the plurality of prospective jurors; wherein for each one of said plurality of prospective jurors the initial notification includes the first juror identification number, the court identification number and a predetermined URL address identifying a location of a host server for accessing a jury voir dire system via a browser of a computer used by one of the plurality of prospective jurors; transmitting a first access request, the first juror identification number, the court identification number and a social security number for the one prospective juror from the computer of the one prospective juror over a general purpose computer network to the host server; comparing a first pair of numbers including the transmitted first juror identification number to the stored first juror identification number for the one prospective juror in the second database to determine whether the transmitted first juror identification number matches the stored first juror identification number and comparing a second pair of numbers including the transmitted social security number to the stored social security number for the one prospective juror in the second database to determine whether the transmitted social security number matches the stored social security number; granting access to a secure portion of the jury voir dire system if the first pair of numbers is a match and the second pair of numbers is a match; serving a web page to the computer for the one prospective juror representing a juror questionnaire form, the juror questionnaire form having a plurality of questions designed to determine whether the one prospective juror is qualified to sit as a juror; completing the juror questionnaire by responding to each of the plurality of questions and transmitting the completed juror questionnaire form from the computer of said prospective juror over the general purpose computer network to the host server; comparing the responses for each of the plurality of questions on the transmitted, completed juror questionnaire form to a stored standard set of responses for each of the plurality of questions, the stored standard set of responses representative of responses for a qualified juror; updating the data stored in the first database and the second database relating to each one of the prospective jurors indicating whether the one of the prospective jurors is qualified based on the results of the comparing step; transmitting a summons for jury service to each one of the plurality of prospective jurors that is qualified, the summons including an assigned report date for the qualified prospective juror to report to the trial court for jury service; querying the qualified prospective juror, in response to an inputted second access request and the first juror identification number from the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network to the host server, whether the qualified prospective juror will accept the assigned report date, request a deferral of the assigned report date or request on exemption from the jury service; serving a Request for Deferral form to the computer of the qualified prospective juror from the host server over the general purpose computer network in response to a request for deferral response to the query from the qualified prospective juror or serving a Request for Exemption form to the computer of the qualified prospective juror from the host server over the general purpose computer network in response to a request for exemption response to the query from the qualified prospective juror; completing and transmitting the completed Request for Deferral form from the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network to the host server in response to a served Request for Deferral form, the completed, transmitted Request for Deferral form including a reason given by the qualified prospective juror for requesting the deferral of the report date; completing and transmitting the completed Request for Exemption form from the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network to the host server in response to a served Request for Exemption form, the completed, transmitted Request for Exemption form including a reason given by the qualified prospective juror for requesting the exemption from jury service; comparing the completed, transmitted Request for Deferral form and the given reason for requesting the deferral to a plurality of predetermined acceptable reasons for deferral of the report date and, if the given reason matches with one of the plurality of predetermined acceptable reasons, transmitting a first approval notification to the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network from the host server, the first approval notification informing the qualified prospective juror that the request for deferral was approved and that a new report date will be assigned; comparing the completed, transmitted Request for Exemption form and the given reason for requesting the exemption to a plurality of predetermined acceptable reasons for exemption from jury service and, if the given reason matches with one of the plurality of acceptable reasons for exemption, transmitting a second approval notification to the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network from the host server, the second approval notification informing the qualified prospective juror that the request for exemption was approved and that the qualified prospective juror is exempted from jury service; updating the data stored in the first database and the second database relating to each one of the qualified prospective jurors with data indicative of the response of the one qualified prospective juror to the query of the querying step and with data indicative of whether a request for deferral or a request for exemption was approved; transmitting a second assigned report date from the host server to the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network if a request for deferral was approved for the qualified prospective juror; transmitting on the report date a second access request and the first juror identification number and the social security number for the qualified prospective juror from the computer of the qualified prospective juror over the general purpose computer network to the host server; repeating the comparing step and the granting access steps; outputting, in response to the second access request following the granting access step, to the computer of the qualified prospective juror a second juror identification number for the qualified prospective juror; updating the data stored in the first database and the second database relating to the qualified prospective juror indicating that the qualified prospective juror reported to the court on the assigned report date; serving a Juror Suitability Test form to the computer of the qualified prospective juror from the host server over the general purpose computer network, the Juror Suitability Test form including a plurality of questions designed to determine at least one of a plurality of trial types for which the qualified prospective juror is suitable to sit as a juror; completing the Juror Suitability Test form by responding to each of the plurality of questions and transmitting the completed Juror Suitability Test form from the computer of the qualified prospective juror to the host server over the general purpose computer network; and comparing the responses for each of the plurality of questions on said transmitted, completed Juror Suitability Test form to a stored standard set of responses for each of the plurality of questions and assigning a group category to the qualified prospective juror, the assigned group category indicative of at least one of a plurality of trial types for which the qualified prospective juror is suitable to sit as a juror.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate one embodiment of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.